Relationship Between The Evaluation Of Life Events And Mental Health In Undergraduates

Different from those previous studies that only focused on undergraduates' negative life events in the country,this study examines the relationship between undergraduates' daily life events(both positive and negative events)and their mental health.Research paradigms of cultural life scripts(culturally shared expectations about the order and timing of life events in a prototypical life course)and personal life stories(some important life events experienced by individuals)were used to investigate contemporary undergraduates' views on daily life events.“Center for epidemiologic studies depression scale(CES-D)”,“PTSD checklist-Civilian(PCL-C)” and “Satisfaction with life scale(SWLS)” were used to measure undergraduates' mental health.In study one,121 undergraduates in Shanghai completed “Questionnaire of cultural life scripts(Berntsen Version)” and “Questionnaire of personal life story(Thomsen Version)”,listing the seven most important events in the lives of hypothetical people living ordinary lives and in their own lives.They also rated their life events on scales of “importance”,“preference” and “emotional valence”.Besides that,the CES-D scale and the PCL-C scale were used to measure the negative aspects of undergraduates' mental health and the SWLS scale was used to measure the positive aspects.Study two examines the effectiveness of the simplified paradigm of“Cultural life scripts and Personal life story”.155 undergraduates in Shanghai completed “Questionnaire of cultural life scripts(Scherman Version)” and“Questionnaire of personal life story(Bohn Version)”,directly evaluating those life events derived from previous studies.The method of measuring mental health remains unchanged.The results of study one show that “undergraduates' preference for personal life story written by themselves” negatively predict their CES-D scores;“undergraduates' preference for cultural life scripts written by themselves” negatively predict theirPCL-C scores.The results of study two show that the events in the simplified version of cultural life script and personal life story coincided well with the events written by undergraduates themselves;“undergraduates' preference for simplified personal life story” negatively predict their CES-D scores;“undergraduates' evaluation of emotional valence of simplified personal life story” negatively predict their PCL-C scores and positively predict their SWLS scores.In short,the results obtained by using the research paradigm of “ simplified version of Cultural life script and Personal life story” are basically consistent with the results of the “ undergraduates-generated Cultural life script and Personal life story” research paradigm,both showing that undergraduates' evaluation of life events is related to their mental health.